The Puppetmaster of Lodz @ Unicorn Theatre, 9/21/12

by Michael Eck
STOCKBRIDGE, MASS. – In 1997, StageWorks, while still at its former North Pointe digs in Kinderhook, offered a magnificent production of Gilles Segal’s “The Puppetmaster of Lodz.” It still lingers powerfully in the mind.
That staging starred Robert Zukerman, who had previously won a San Diego Critics Circle Award for the titular role of Samuel Finklebaum, and who would go on to play the role again to great acclaim in New York.
Finkelbaum is a difficult character in a difficult situation — a man trapped not only in a real Berlin apartment, but also in the Polish ghetto of his own psyche.
It is 1950, and the war has been over for five years, but Finkelbaum refuses to believe this; he refuses to leave his small apartment, where every noise, every knock on the door may signal — at least in the troubled man’s fragile mind — danger, discovery and death.
Joby Earle is playing Finkelbaum for Berkshire Theatre Group in a new production translated by Sara O’Connor and directed by Brian Roff.
The play is finishing up a split run that began in June and resumed earlier this month.
Earle’s performance will linger, too, though likely not as long as Zukerman’s.
Earle — like the rest of the cast — is frankly a little too young for the role. He also has an antic aspect that trades dynamics for tics. But he does inhabit the tangled man quite well, finding moments that clarify the puppeteer’s obsessive motives.
His occasional, primal cries of rage are frightening.
“Puppetmaster” is haunting in many ways, not least because of the tragic Birkenau puppet show devised by Finkelbaum (and imagined by puppet crafter Emily DeCole). The man also sleeps with a puppet of his wife, Rachel, and the reasons why, revealed in the play, are heartbreaking.
Earle is abetted onstage by a small trail of supporting characters, led by BTG regular Tara Franklin as the apartment building’s concierge. She is tasked with trying to get Finkelbaum out of his cage, and as such she is something of a sparring partner.
Jason Simms’ set lets both sides of the action unfurl, but it seems oddly log cabin-like for an urban space.
Franklin is typically excellent as the frustrated woman; and she and Matt R. Harrington, as a Nazi hunter investigating Finkelbaum’s true identity, are new to this second run.
“Puppetmaster” is decidedly not feel-good theater. It is a hard, difficult play to watch. But art can tell truths, even tough ones, and this play does.